Exclusive VOICE! The leader of the German band received his driver's license and has offered himself his first car.

Bill Kaulitz, he is beautiful, he sings well, he has style, he is rich, he is...

In short, just one thing was missing to complete the board: be able to ride the asphalt aboard of a good large car which would stand out.

But the problem was that while all members of TH have passed the exam, Bill has failed to pass it the first time...

But after a few weeks of additional driving lessons, Bill of Tokio Hotel has finally gained confidence and got his driver's license two days ago, last Wednesday, his second attempt then.

Once with the sesame seeds in his pocket, it was only missing to choose the engine of his dreams. Here, Bill opted for a German brand by offering himself a grey BMW 6 Series convertible... Price of the small jewel? 90,000 euros. This is the price to pay to ventilate his hair with class...

This German band is all the hype in Europe and its four members have already started breaking hearts in our country. Are you ready to fall in love with them? You’ll surely do- By Diana Matozo

The leaders of Tokio Hotel are twin brothers Bill (lead singer) and Tom (guitar) Kaulitz. Despite the fact that they are identical twins, they have very different and distinctive personalities. They talked to our magazine (TU) about their music and they also shared some secrets of their love life with us. Find out everything about it!

TU: How do you feel now that your music is known in our country? Tom: Once we dreamt about international success but we never really thought that it would happen. People in our country know about us but crossing borders is not only amazing, it’s also weird! We’ve never been in Mexico but our music is being played there…it’s a great satisfaction. We would love to visit your country.

TU: Do you have girlfriends? How’s your ideal girl? Tom: I don’t have a girlfriend and I can’t really say that I have an ‘ideal’ girl. I can’t say that I prefer blond girls over brunettes or redheads, all I can say is that there are a lot of beautiful girls everywhere.

(Pic: ‘Georg and Gustav are a little behind on the girl topic’- Bill) TU: Is dating easier when you’re in this career? Tom: Of course music helps. In school, it’s the kids that are musicians the ones that tend to be very popular and have great success! That’s why I decided early on that I’d play guitar (laughs). No, honestly, I have never had ‘girl trouble’ and I have never used my fame to get with a girl. Bill: In my case, music has definitely helped, I had my first girlfriend when I started singing but in this business, there’s little time for a serious relationship.

TU: Who’s your favorite (female) singer or actress? Tom: I love Jessica Alba, she’s my favorite! Bill: For me, it has to be Nena, the German singer, I was very influenced by her. I saw one of her concerts on TV and it was a moment that left a mark on me. I was very young and right after that, I started writing my own songs. It was clear to me that I had to be on a stage one day. TU: Being twins, have you ever tried making a move on the same girl? Tom: I had a girlfriend and when we broke up, I tried to talk her into giving my brother his first kiss. I wanted him to live that experience because (until then) Bill had never had a girlfriend. It was a way of showing how much I cared.

TU: Is there a message behind your look? Tom: We have never wanted to create a fake image. This is part of our personality, this is what we feel, this is who we are. If you see pictures of us before being a band, you would see that the change hasn’t really been a drastic one.

TU: Would you get a girlfriend’s name tattooed? Tom: If the relationship isn’t serious, I don’t think I would, I don’t think it’s worth it (laughs); if it were something a little more serious…I don’t think I’d do it either! I am not a big fan of tattoos. Bill: I love tattoos! And if I were really in love, why not? I think I would do it.

TU: Are you guys faithful (when in a relationship)? Tom: When you are in love, it’s important to be faithful and feel that the other person is being faithful too, it’s basic. Bill: For me, this is something fundamental. Besides, if I am in love, I don’t really feel like accepting any other ‘offers’. With me, you don’t have to worry about cheating, I believe in being faithful and that’s what I practice but… I haven’t really been with a girl for quite some time now.

TU: How do you feel about your fans getting so crazy sometimes? Bill: We’re really proud of the fans that we have, they support us so much, they are always waiting for our concerts, they sing our songs, they have an amazing level of energy and that’s contagious. They make us feel the need to continue doing what we are doing.

(We love to see all the fan signs and banners at our concerts!)

What every fan should know:

*They were born in Magdeburg, Germany. There they are listed as part of the ‘Town’s Most Beloved Sons’. *Tom is older than Bill…10 minutes older only! *When they were little kids, the twins would wear t-shirts with their names on them so that people wouldn’t get confused. *These brothers have a philosophy in life: ‘Follow your dreams’ *Gustav started playing drums when he was only 4 years old! *Georg is a Fall Out Boy and Green Day fan *When they recorded their first album, two of them were just 13 (Bill and Tom)

- The motto of Rock in Rio is 'For a better world'. What would you do to make the world a better place? - Bill: That is a really difficult question and it can't be answered with only one sentence.There's always a lot of things that can be done to make the world better. A festival like this is a good first step and participating in it as musicians too.

- How was yesterday's concert in Barcelona? - Bill: We are verey pleased with our spanish fans. Last night we played there and it was a beautiful concert. We have a very good feeling with our spanish fans.

- Have you ever been afraid of reaching success at such a young age? - Tom: There are things that happen to us that we still can't believe, like been able to perform at Rock in Rio. It's true that we're having success, we know we've had a lot of luck and sometimes we've needed time to assume all this. - Are you always dressed up like that? - Tom: We'd love to be able to always dress like this, but what happens is that we can't anymore. When we went to school we did dress like this because it's our style, but now it would be a little uncomfortable to go outside like this because everybody would recognise us.

-How are you feeling after the operation? Have you noticed any change in your voice?-Bill: No, and I'm really happy. Now finally I can say that everything is like before, which was the aim of the operation. It is true that it was a specially low time in our career and also personally i was deeply touched. The worst was that we we're very sorry for all our fans for all the concerts we had to cancell. A vocalist is always afraid of being operated(?) on the voice, but fortunately, now i can say I'm fully recovered.

- Yesterday a concert in Barcelona, today in Madrid, tomorrow in Lisboa...How do you keep up with such an intense pace? -Bill: Good, cause we are addicted to work, we've been nearly 3 years, almost without stopping. We only rest for two weeks a year, but it's what we wanted, what we like. -Tom: We arrange our agenda, we decide when and where we perform...no one decides it for us. Obviously, there's times when you think you can't take it anymore, there's days when we are in 3 different citys and sometimes you don't even know where you get up...but it's something that fills us.

-What do you think of the fan phenomena that follows you? Are you aware that one day this may be over? -Bill: Yes, of course, but you have to know that we also started as a small group and only 4 or 5 persons would go to watch us perform, so we know what is like not having success, that's why we appreciate what we have. Bad times can always arrive, like in every job, but we hope this lasts for a long time.

-Do you know the Jonas Brothers? -Tom: Yes,we've heard of them, specially when we went to the US, were they are very famous. -Bill: Now they're starting to be famous in Europe. And that is something that we have in common with them, cause we are starting in the US. Musically we don't know them very well.

- You guys are rich, single, famous...Do you have any whises left? -Bill: (I can´t see what is written there)...a lot because success hooks you, it's like a drug, you always want more, more concerts, more tours...and you want to do better each time. And about being single, it has to be clear, that we are all single. (laughs)

- So, is it not true then that Bill is with a spanish girl? -Bill: No, It's no true, I've been 3 years alone now. There are so many things said about us which aren't true...like that we are 'little multimillionaires'. Translation: EdurneTH@thus

In February 2008 the city of New York was once again invaded by hordes of screaming girls and it could mean only one thing – another boy band was in town. This time however there was something different about the whole thing – all the slogans and declarations of love on the T-shirts and posters were not in English, but in German. “Bill, ess briiingt miiiisch oummm,” for example, (“Bill, it’s gonna kill me”) as the line from one of the band’s hits goes. This was also the refrain sung by most of the female fans at the Tokio Hotel gig at the Fillmore NY club – New York’s legendary concert venue that in the past has seen fans reeling in the aisles to such musical greats as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

After taking Europe by storm the band went stateside and – to everybody’s amazement – managed to conquer America, too. At first the media back home in Germany were in some cases more amused than impressed, they did try however to find an explanation for the phenomenon. How could it be that four young guys – in fact, barely-of-age guys – from the town of Magdeburg in eastern Germany had now become icons of global youth culture, or even sex symbols?

Hair like a porcupine Without doubt their look most definitely played a crucial role. The lead singer, Bill, has spiky hair like a porcupine, eyes lined with kohl and he is dressed like a punk, which makes him look like one of those Japanese manga figures. The guitarist, Tom, Bill’s identical twin brother, goes more for shaggy Rasta dreadlocks and the baggy hip-hop look. Fan forums are equally as obsessed with the way the brothers look as they are with the music.

Of course, there is never success without money. Tokio Hotel’s label, Universal, is one of the biggest on the music scene and has spared neither effort nor expense to market the quartet to a young audience via websites, publicity campaigns and magazines. This however is not enough to explain their success, especially when you think that only one tenth of all performing artists manage to bring home a profit for their recording companies. Promoting a new act, as we see, can quite definitely involve quite a few risks, as one of the business’s top dogs found out to its dismay – SonyBMG had signed on Tokio Hotel, but terminated their contract just before their breakthrough in 2005.

By word of mouth on new grapevines

laut.de" title="Tokio Hotel is über amazing. Fan’s scribbling in New York. Photo: Alexander Engelen, copyright: laut.de" align="left" style="margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px;" />Another vital publicity factor these days is the effect of internet platforms like YouTube and MySpace that enable new trends to spread like wildfire. It is a form of the classic word-of-mouth advertising that uses different channels to not only overcome international barriers, but also linguistic ones. This is in fact what makes the success of Tokio Hotel so surprising – most of the lyrics they sing are in German.

Before Tokio Hotel there were of course other German success stories. Kraftwerk, for example, who, with their song Autobahn, pioneered the myth of fast-lane freedom for fast-lane individuals. Nina Hagen is still a well-known face in the USA, famous for her outrageous performances; the same with Nena who managed get to number two in the US charts in 1983 with her song 99 Red Balloons. Since the end of the 1990s Rammstein has been the most successful musical export in German. With their explosive stage show, brute-force arrangements and their sometimes controversial lyrics the group promotes the cliché of the remorseless, sinister Teuton.

German graffiti in Rome

Tokio Hotel have also pulled off another great feat – they have triggered a huge, new surge of interest in the German language. “German is sexy,” as two female fans at the concert in New York told the German magazine, Focus. “Young Americans and Canadians have started learning German so that they can understand the lyrics better,” says Wolfram Hermann of the Goethe-Institut in Boston. “There has been a huge response,” confirms his colleague in Rome, Elisa Costa. In Italy ten per cent more teenagers between the ages of 11 and 16 have enrolled in German courses. In France, according to information published in the German news magazine, Spiegel, it as many as 25 per cent. On the institute’s website in Italy there was a competition in which you could win 100 Tokio Hotel concert tickets – in two weeks 5,000 people took part in it. They had to answer the questions in German. On the Rome underground graffiti has now appeared exalting the names of the band members and proclaiming in German messages like “ich liebe dich” (I love you) or “du bist mein Engel” (You are my angel).

Another clear sign of the group’s potential is the fact that T-shirts, posters and biographies are available all over the place, whether you are in Palermo or Istanbul, New York or Paris. Tokio Hotel has furthermore paved the way for other young German bands to make it in a big way, for example, Cinema Bizarre or Nevada Tan. This is the reason why branches of the Goethe-Institut in Europe and in North America are planning further online campaigns and cooperation projects with both schools and the press to enhance the spread of the German language.

Young, surprising and sexy

The aim here is to achieve what Hesse, Goethe and Grass, etc, did not quite manage to do. The fans at the Fillmore NY concert all sang in unison “Wir häm unns toadgeliiebt” (We've loved ourselves to death) from the Tokio Hotel song, Loved To Death. It might not sound quite as elegant as Goethe’s Wayfarer's Night Song, “In allen Wipfeln spürest du kaum einen Hauch” (In all the treetops you feel hardly a breath of air) – maybe that is the reason why the quality press and state institutions were initially so reluctant to jump on the Tokio Hotel bandwagon. Can a band with such bizarre hairstyles and lyrics oozing with the Weltschmerz of youth represent a country that is respected as the world’s top exporting nation?

The answer lies with the fans. Not just in Germany, but everywhere the fans camp out for days in all kinds of weather in the hope of getting the best concert tickets – be it in Geneva, Tel Aviv or Moscow. It is hard to put into a nutshell why there is so much enthusiasm for Tokio Hotel. One thing is for sure – they have certainly managed to introduce the world to a new image of Germany –

"Hysterical screaming fits. Constant sold-out gigs. Best chart positions. - TOKIO HOTEL! The German pop band has been awarded numerous times in different categories. A real success story! And it only just begun... The show in Luxembourg: Rockhal on 7 MAR 2008 (for tickets: rockhal.lu)."

All: And we are... Tokio Hotel! Bill: Lots of fans have written to us saying that some of our songs help them in certain situations, and to deal with them that they feel better afterwards. I know so myself, and I think that every one of us listens to a lot of music at the moment and that music can help and support quite a lot in certain situations, and we of course want to as well. And it we're happy to know that when we make songs that people feel better and understood afterwards.

I don't think very much of [indiscriminate]. I think it's better for people to find themselves like how it was by us, and those that find themselves would be an optimal opportunity. But yeah, I'm not really the type for that.

Tom: It's good that if you have a band and that you know each other for so long, it's good to have one another to help and hold on to so that you don't go walking around through life in a pink bubble and to keep you down on the ground of reality.